THE PiE TEAM
Somewhere in a group chat right now, a Saffer is arguing passionately about whether South Africans are actually friendly — and doing it so aggressively that the irony is completely lost on everyone involved.
The chaos started, as chaos so often does these days, on Instagram. Charlize Theron — Oscar winner, professional action hero, and Benoni’s most famous export — decided to drop a truth bomb on her followers: she is, by her own admission, terrible at small talk. She explained that Americans have turned chit-chat into an Olympic sport, and next to them, she comes across as a bit frosty. Then came the line that broke Mzansi Twitter: small talk, she said, is simply not one of South Africa’s strong suits.
Cue the national identity crisis.
Within hours, the country split into two camps. Camp One: “How DARE she, we are the friendliest people on Earth, ask literally anyone who’s ever had a stranger call them ‘my bru’ within four seconds of meeting them.” Camp Two: “Okay but also she’s not wrong, we will absolutely tell you your outfit looks terrible before we ask how your day is going.”
Here’s the thing though — both camps are sort of right, and that’s exactly what makes us delightful.
The Science of Being Nice (Yes, That’s a Real Thing)
Turns out this isn’t just group-chat philosophy — someone actually did the maths. The Cultural Atlas, back in 2015, sized up South Africans as warm, socially open people who also happen to be refreshingly direct, occasionally to the point of bluntness. In other words: we hug easily, but we’ll also tell you exactly what we think of your driving.
Then, in 2024, payments company Remitly went full scientist about it. They surveyed 3,000 travelers across 27 countries, using the “agreeableness” section of the Big Five Personality Test — the same psychological framework used to assess things like, presumably, whether you’re a good roommate. Each country got scored out of 40 on the friendliness scale.
And South Africa didn’t just do well. South Africa won. All of it. The whole friendliness Olympics.
The final podium looked like this:
| Rank | Country | Friendliness Score (out of 40) |
| 🥇 1 | South Africa | 34.63 |
| 🥈 2 | Greece | 33.71 |
| 🥉 3 | Croatia | 33.5 |
| 4 | Mexico | — |
| 5 | Sweden | — |
Yes, Sweden — land of stoic silence, minimalist furniture, and personal space so sacred it’s basically a national religion — cracked the top five. Meanwhile South Africa, a country where you can be adopted into a family purely by standing too close to their braai, took the actual gold medal.
So here’s the real plot twist: Charlize wasn’t describing South Africa. She was describing herself using South Africa as an alibi. There’s a difference between “not good at small talk” and “not friendly,” and apparently the entire nation just proved it by scientific consensus, in 27 countries, with actual data.
So Are We Friendly or Not?
Honestly? We’re the friend who skips “how’s the weather” and goes straight to “eish, you look tired, what happened.” We don’t do small talk. We do big talk, immediately, with strangers, unprompted, and somehow that’s what makes people feel at home.
Charlize might not do small talk. But give her — or any South African — five minutes, and you’ll have a life story, a nickname, and an invitation to Sunday lunch. Data doesn’t lie. Mzansi’s got the friendliness trophy, and honestly, we knew it all along — we just weren’t going to make small talk about it.
